Free Republic

In a perfect world, students might be judged by their ideas alone -- not by whether they write "you're" or "your." But that isn't the world we live in.It happens every time. As I hand the test out to my middle school students, one of them will invariably look up, pencil at the ready, and ask, "Does spelling count?" Let's ignore the fact that my students should know better than to even ask this question in the first place. I've answered it more times than I care to remember, usually in the fall of the new school year, and it...

The First Amendment to the Constitution is arguably the most important. This amendment, packaged with the nine following it as the Bill of Rights, grants citizens the freedoms of press, speech, religion, peaceful assembly and a right to "petition the government for a redress of grievances." Freedom of speech cases are often some of the most hotly contested in the country. Recently, a case involving a high school social studies teacher has been given national media attention. The case involves Denver teacher Jay Bennish, who was put on paid leave from Overland High School after comparing President George W. Bush's...

Jay Bennish is a teacher who collects paychecks for teaching Colorado high school students about geography. Here is a sample from one of Bennish’s classes: “Do you see how this economic system [capitalism] is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It is at odds with human rights. Anytime you have a system that’s designed to procure profit, when profit is the bottom motive, money, that means money is going to become more important potentially than what? Safety, human lives, etcetera.” According to Tustin Amole, Public Information Officer for the Cherry Creek School District, the above statement...